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From: Mark Isaak <specimenNOSPAM@curioustaxon.omy.net>
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Speaking of chirality - "mirror cell" could be a majorn threat
Date: Sun, 22 Dec 2024 18:25:35 -0800
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On 12/21/24 9:26 PM, Pro Plyd wrote:
> 
> Great idea for a sci fi story. Like Andromeda Strain.
> 
> Or
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice-nine
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywater
> 
> Other related links here
> 
> <https://news.google.com/stories/ 
> CAAqNggKIjBDQklTSGpvSmMzUnZjbmt0TXpZd1NoRUtEd2lwZ0xqeURCRWhCb2xna2Ewck9DZ0FQAQ?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen>
> 
> https://www.yahoo.com/news/scientist-working-create-mirror- 
> life-013650643.html
> Updated December 20, 2024
> 
> A scientist working to create 'mirror life'
> discovered it could be 'a perfect bioweapon.'
> She's asking other researchers to stop.
> 
> * A mirror microorganism could end up being a
> major pathogen since immune systems wouldn't
> notice it.
> 
> * Mirror-image biology inverts a fundamental
> property of life on Earth: which way molecules
> point.
> 
> ...
> Mirror biology takes a fundamental rule of
> life on Earth, called chirality, and flips it.
> 
> Chirality is the simple fact that molecules —
> like sugars and amino acids — point in one of
> two directions. They are either right-handed
> or left-handed.
> 
> For some reason, though, life uses only one
> chiral form of each molecule. DNA, for example,
> uses only right-handed sugars for its backbone.
> That's why it twists to the right.
> 
> In mirror biology, scientists aim to create
> living cells where all the chirality is flipped.
> Where natural life uses a right-handed peptide
> to build proteins, mirror life would use the
> same peptide in its left-handed form.
> ...
> A mirror pathogen "doesn't interact with the
> host," Adamala said. "It just uses it as a warm
> incubator with a lot of nutrients."
> 
> If a mirror bacteria escaped the lab, it could
> cause slow, persistent infections that couldn't
> be treated with antibiotics (because those,
> too, rely on chirality).
> 
> Because they wouldn't face immune resistance,
> mirror bacteria wouldn't need to specialize in
> infecting corn, or goats, or birds.
> 
> "It would be a disease of anything that lives
> that can be infected," Adamala said.
> 
> In the worst-case scenario, a mirror bacteria
> would multiply endlessly, unfettered. It would
> take over its hosts and eventually kill them.
> It would destroy crops. It would have no
> predators. It would overwhelm entire
> ecosystems, swapping out portions of our
> natural world for a new mirror world.
> ...

Possibly that's what happened, and we are living in the result.

-- 
Mark Isaak
"Wisdom begins when you discover the difference between 'That
doesn't make sense' and 'I don't understand.'" - Mary Doria Russell